The Stalk Club (2 page)

Soward noted the other set of tracks on the road which
were headed inland, in the opposite direction to the girl’s car.  The skid
marks straddled the double centre line and then veered left, coming to rest in
soft mud on the side of the road.  When Soward first arrived at the scene,
Carey had been taking measurements of their length and width.  He told Soward
they measured around fifty-seventy metres in length which indicated that
the mystery car had probably been travelling at a speed in excess of one
hundred kilometres per hour, depending on the type of car and what condition
its brakes were in.  Either way, it was a lot of speed to be taking into a
fairly tight corner which was speed rated at seventy kilometres per hour by a road
sign a short way up the road.

Soward listened in silence and then turned to watch as
the ambulance, with lights flashing but siren quiet, slowly headed into
Batemans Bay to take the girl to hospital.  In a career which had already
spanned nearly thirty-three years, he had attended hundreds of traffic
accidents and although the circumstances differed a little each time, the
results were inevitably the same.  In a few careless seconds a girl named Kylie
Faulkner had her life turned upside down.

Present
day

Sarah
Rayner looked at her watch as she skipped along the sidewalk as fast as her
heels would carry her.  “Shit.  I’m late. Eight-fifteen already!  If Ivan
catches me coming in late again he’s going to kill me.  I’d be able to walk
faster if I hadn’t worn these damn shoes.” 

Sarah
looked down at her feet that were wedged neatly into her four inch heel, red
Manolos. They’d cost her three hundred dollars, on sale, about half a nights
work at the club, depending on the generosity of the patrons, but she considered
them a bargain and all her friends told her they looked fabulous on her.  They
were right of course.

As
she made her way down Goulburn Street she stopped momentarily in front of
Cypress Lane and peered into its interior.  Despite being poorly lit and with
an unpleasant smell wafting out of it, she reasoned that it might shave a
couple of minutes off her journey and at that moment that was a bargain she was
prepared to strike.

She
turned in.  It was dark, with the only illumination provided by the occasional
shafts of light from the windows of the buildings that backed onto either side
of the narrow one way road.  Even during the day it was a dim and cool place as
the sun struggled to penetrate.  By the time she was twenty metres within its
grasp, the sounds of the city were reduced to a distant hum. 

Cinching
her coat about her waist to ward off the rapidly cooling evening she forged
ahead and looked toward the small square of light in the distance.  The lane
appeared to be deserted and she quietly wished for a crowd to accompany her. 
She had always been a people person.  The only sound was her shoes and she
listened to them for company.  Before long however, in between the tapping sounds
her heels made, she heard a small noise behind her.  She’d just come from a bar
where she had downed three daiquiris with friends and her mind was feeling
their effect, but the noise behind her focused her attention and sobered her up
instantaneously.  She listened intently without stopping or looking behind her
and again the noise came to her.  It sounded like a shoe scraping against the
pieces of gravel on the bitumen.

She looked
behind her and despite the dim lighting thought she saw a shape move behind a
large dumpster forty metres back down the lane.  She stared intently at it and
listened for sounds but heard and saw nothing.  The movement she had seen, or
thought she had seen, had only been for the briefest of moments and she began
to wonder if she’d imagined it, but at the back of her mind a cold and certain
fear began to grow.

She
assessed her options in a matter of seconds while her heart beat heavily in her
chest.  She considered walking back down the road to confront whatever lay
hiding behind the dumpster.  Normally she liked to confront her fears, but here,
alone in the deserted laneway, her feet remained rooted to the spot.

She
continued walking down the lane, more briskly now, counting down the metres
until she would escape into the light.  She could see people there, and traffic
whizzing by.  She would be safe when she was amongst them and yet, she kept
hearing the sounds behind her.  They became less furtive as her follower kept
pace. 

She
shouted over her shoulder, “Look, I know you’re back there, so stop fucking
around ok?”  She had hoped to sound bold and fearless, but her voice betrayed
her and sounded like a nervous schoolgirl.

As she
got to within fifty metres of the end of the lane her confidence started to
return, however she heard more noises behind her, closer now.  The sound scraped
over her nerves like fingers down a blackboard.  She couldn’t bring herself to
turn around again and her hand went inside her bag and gripped the can of capsicum
spray within. 

“No,
please God no,” she whispered frantically.

Within
metres of safety, her eyes firmly fixed on the end of the street, she stepped
in a small pot-hole.  The left heel of her beloved Manolos snapped off with a
crack and she fell heavily to the ground.  She tried to get up quickly, but
pain lanced through her ankle and she crumpled to the ground again.  She looked
around frantically for her bag.  It had been flung from her grasp as she had
desperately tried to cushion her fall with her palms, which were now bleeding
and jarred from taking the brunt of her impact with the grimy road. 

She
looked back down the laneway and almost gasped as a figure appeared from the
dark, moving quickly towards her.  By some trick of the dim light, its shadow
billowed up enormously behind it giving the appearance of some super-sized
spectre.

Sarah
scrambled the couple of metres that separated her from her bag, tearing holes
in her stockings and scuffing her knees in the process.  A full panic consumed
her and her hands tore at her bag as she reached it, frantically searching its
cluttered contents for the can of spray which eluded her grasp for a mad
moment.  After what seemed an eternity but in reality was only seconds, she
grabbed the can and ripped the lid off it.  She turned to face her assailant
and was just in time to see a figure loom large over her.

“It’s
a girl?”

At eight
p.m. on a Friday night Nero’s Lounge and Bar was vibrant, buzzing, bordering on
noisy.  Its modern cosmopolitan décor, location on Market Street in the city
centre and remotely reasonable drink prices ensured its popularity as a Sydney night spot.  Its clientele was mostly comprised of well paid Generation X and Y
office workers who paid by card as they drank the pressures of their working
week away.  The main feature of Nero’s was a long marble clad bar running half the
length of one of the side walls.  There was row upon row of wine and spirit
bottles stacked against the rear wall of the bar and fifteen premium local and
imported beers on tap for good measure.  The rest of the precious inner city
floor space was filled with bar stools, lounges, coffee tables and a small
stage in the rear corner for live gigs. 

In the
front left corner of the bar a group of five sat around a table.  Through trial
and error they had worked out that this was the quietest and most private spot
in the place.  Four of the group had just spent the last two hours stalking a
stranger. 

They
meet at Nero’s every Friday evening to play their
game
.  They choose
their stalking victims, or
marks
,
as they refer to them,
at
random from the people who walk past the bar in the early evening.  They look
for someone interesting, someone who stands out from the crowd, someone who
looks like they have a secret.  They stalk their victims for two hours and the
winner of the evenings hunt is the one who finds out the most information about
the person they have followed.  Their keenly contested prize is merely free
drinks for the remainder of the night courtesy of the losing stalkers.  

Grant
McKinlay was thirty, solid and short, however his mundane appearance, coupled with
his sharp mind made him a natural at stalking.  Tonight had been his turn to
choose the people in the street that the group would stalk, while he stayed
behind and waited for their return.  He had filled in his time by becoming
lubricated with several beers and trying a few well rehearsed pickup lines on
some of the ladies in the bar who passed him by and then passed him up. 

“You
first Nat.  Let’s see what you’ve got.”

The
group of five looked to Natalie Bassett.  She was small and petite, with wavey
brown hair - for today at least - small
upturned nose and easy on the eye.  She was dressed in a dark blue tailored
suit that hugged the curves of her body like a dirty uncle.  As he did every
time he saw her, Grant mentally shook his head, wondering how on earth his
brother, Bryce, who sat attentively beside her, had managed to snag such a
girl.  Not that his brother didn’t have his good points, but at one hundred and
seventy-two centimetres tall, a body shaped like a pudgy beer can,
receding hairline and a relatively low paying job, he had never been mistaken
for Matt Damon.

Natalie
sat on her hands, grimacing.  “Well it’s a bit embarrassing really.  I lost my
guy after only a few minutes and then spent the next two hours trying to find
him again.”

“You’re
kidding?  How?” responded Bryce.

“I
followed him for a few blocks towards Darling Harbour, but then he ducked into
an office block and jumped into an elevator.  There was security in the foyer
and I couldn’t get past them.  So, to cut a short story even shorter, I got zip
tonight.”

“You
must be losing your touch princess,” laughed Craig, pleased that he had one
person less to compete with for the opportunity to again abuse his liver free
of charge.  Craig Thoms was six feet tall and possessed a wide and strong set
of shoulders that tapered down to slim legs.  His blue eyes were set in an open
and expressive face which was normally decorated by a smirk of some kind.  His
hair was straight brown and overdue for a cut.

“Kiss
my arse Craig“, replied Natalie

Craig
was about to add
‘whatever turns you on honey’
but Grant got in first
and saved him from his usual mistake of going one step too far.

“Alright
kids, that’s enough.  How’d you go little bro?”

“Not
much better than Nats I’m afraid.  You didn’t do me any favours tonight.”

“Really? 
Your guy looked like a serial killer to me.  So what happened?”

“Ok,
my guy got on a bus so I jumped on too, but made the mistake of sitting next to
a small but incredibly pungent old woman.  I didn’t ask, but I got the strong impression
that she wasn’t overly keen on regular showering,” he said with a straight
face.

Craig
let out a raucous laugh.  It was one of the reasons he liked Bryce.  Bryce was
a self-admitted pain in the arse sometimes, but in small doses he was one of the
funniest guys Craig had ever known. 

“Finally,
after a thirty minute ride out into the burbs, he got off the bus and went into
his house.  By this stage I was very excited, not.  I could see him through his
window and although he might have looked like a serial killer, all he did
tonight was switch on the TV, grab a beer, put his feet up and scratch his
crotch.  He wasn’t going anywhere in a hurry so I decided to cut my losses and
try and find a bus back here.  I didn’t even find out what his name was.”

“That’s
too bad Bryce.  How about I go next,” said Craig magnanimously.  “That way you guys
can concede defeat and not bore me with more of your pathetic efforts.” 

“Here
we go,” sighed Natalie, rolling her eyes theatrically.

Craig
plugged his handicam into the USB port of Bryce’s laptop, which was sitting on
the table in front of them.  Grant turned it to the wall and the group crowded
in behind it so no-one else could see what was on the screen, not that anyone nearby
seemed to notice or care.  There were several other groups in the bar crowded
around their tablets, checking out their Facebook accounts.  Craig focused his
attention on the viewfinder of his handicam as he commenced playback of his
footage on the laptop.  The image of a man walking down the street came on the
screen. 

“Meet
Mr. Jeffrey Quinn.” narrated Craig.  “He’s a little strange looking, which is
no doubt why you chose him Grant.” 

Grant
nodded.  The man in the footage was paper thin, wearing olive coloured outdated
pants which fitted him snuggly and a bright orange shirt which screamed in
silent outrage at his lime green tie.  The footage showed him walking, with
briefcase in hand, thirty metres ahead of the camera.

A
new image of a small apartment complex surrounded by a large security fence
came up on the screen.

“Mr.
Quinn lives in a swanky apartment complex in Darlinghurst, apartment seven.” 

Craig
again fast-forwarded the footage.  When he stopped he was indoors, in an
entryway of a brightly lit and expensively outfitted apartment.”

“You
didn’t!” cried Natalie aghast.